A Course in Miracles

Text - Chapter 1

The Meaning of Miracles

I. Principles of Miracles

1. There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not
"harder" or "bigger" than another. They are
all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.

2. Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters
is their source, which is far beyond evaluation.

3. Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real
miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything
that comes from love is a miracle.

4. All miracles mean life, and God is the giver of life. His
voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all
you need to know.

5. Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should
not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles
can be misguided.

6. Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something
has gone wrong.

7. Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary
first.

8. Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are
performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily
have less.

9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of
love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange
reverses the physical laws. They bring more love both to the
giver and the receiver.

10. The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is
a misunderstanding of their purpose.

11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication
of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received,
and through miracles love is expressed.

12. Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower
or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level
of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates
the spiritual.

13. Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they
alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth,
which seem to go back but really go forward. They undo the past
in the present, and thus release the future.

14. Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because
they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate
into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather,
the uncreative use of mind.

15. Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of
time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively.
It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will
cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.

16. Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is
as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously increase
the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver.

17. Miracles transcend the body. They are sudden shifts into
invisibility, away from the bodily level. That is why they heal.

18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you
can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as
yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously.

19. Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation
because the Sonship is the sum of all that God created. Miracles
therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time.

20. Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the
body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads
to the healing power of the miracle.

21. Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles
you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others.

22. Miracles are associated with fear only because of the
belief that darkness can hide. You believe that what your physical
eyes cannot see does not exist. This leads to a denial of spiritual
sight.

23. Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in
true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from
confusing the levels.

24. Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead
because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore
abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in
the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare,
and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.

25. Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness
which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all
the time and in all the dimensions of time.

26. Miracles represent freedom from fear. "Atoning"
means "undoing." The undoing of fear is an essential
part of the Atonement value of miracles.

27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me
to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.

28. Miracles are a way of earning release from fear. Revelation
induces a state in which fear has already been abolished. Miracles
are thus a means and revelation is an end.

29. Miracles praise God through you. They praise him by honoring
his creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because
they deny body-identification and affirm spirit-identification.

30. By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception
and show them in proper alignment. This places spirit at the
center, where it can communicate directly.

31. Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. You should
thank God for what you really are. The children of God are holy
and the miracle honors their holiness, which can be hidden but
never lost.

32. I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions.
They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy.
By placing you beyond the physical laws they raise you into the
sphere of celestial order. In this order you are perfect.

33. Miracles honor you because you are lovable. They dispel
illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you. They
thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares.
By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions,
they restore your sanity.

34. Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning
for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength
leaves no room for intrusions.

35. Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always
have observable effects.

36. Miracles are examples of right thinking, aligning your
perceptions with truth as God created it.

37. A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking
by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception
and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement
principle, where perception is healed. Until this has occurred,
knowledge of the Divine Order is impossible.

38. The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. He recognizes
both God's creations and your illusions. He separates the true
from the false by his ability to perceive totally rather than
selectively.

39. The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies
error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by
perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears.

40. The miracle acknowledges everyone as your brother and
mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God.

41. Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. They
thus correct, or atone for, the faulty perception of lack.

42. A major contribution of miracles is their strength in
releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation
and lack.

43. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state
of miracle-readiness.

44. The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of
Christ and the acceptance of his Atonement.

45. A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you
have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations
of which you are not even aware.

46. The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium. Miracles
do not involve this type of communication, because they are temporary
communication devices. When you return to your original form
of communication with God by direct revelation, the need for
miracles is over.

47. The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need
for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not
under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.

48. The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal
for controlling time. Only revelation transcends it, having nothing
to do with time at all.

49. The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception.
It is a device for perception correction, effective quite apart
from either the degree or the direction of the error. This is
its true indiscriminateness.

50. The miracle compares what you have made with creation,
accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what
is out of accord as false.